Delhi’s best preschools 2013

For the fourth year in succession, a carefully selected sample base of young parents and principals/teachers have ranked The Magic Years, Vasant Vihar, Delhi’s #1 followed by Step by Step, Panchsheel. Here are Delhi’s best preschools 2013: Judged by the Quantum of Media coverage that the annual scramble for admissions of precious infants into the capital’s nurseries gets in the winter months, Delhi is the most early childhood care and education (ECCE)-conscious metro in India. Year-on-year print and audio-visual media feature  stories of well-clad and shod young middle and upper middle class couples  braving the winter chill before gates of the national capital’s most reputed preschools to acquire all-important admission forms for their little ones. With Delhi having expanded far beyond the main city and transforming into Delhi state and Delhi NCR (national capital region) with a massive population estimated at 20 million, the number of nurseries and pre-primaries in Delhi NCR are multiplying at a faster pace than the national average of 35 percent per year. But despite the number of preschools spread across the city, Delhi’s informed young parents, teachers, and educationists evidently accord the highest premium to tried and tested preschools with established reputations.  This cautious conservatism explains why for the fourth year in succession the carefully selected sample base of 225 young parents (with children in preschool) and 61 principals and teachers who were asked to rate Delhi’s Top 20 pre-primaries has ranked The Magic years, Vasant Vihar (TMY, estb.1976) the national capital’s most respected preschool. The informed sample respondents have ranked TMY #1 on six of the ten parameters of ECCE excellence on which all preschools have been evaluated — teacher competence, teacher welfare and development, infrastructure, individual attention to students, innovative teaching and leadership, awarding it an aggregate score of 920 against the maximum possible 1,100. “The consistently top rank awarded by the Delhi public to TMY is as much to the Montessori system of ECCE to which we’re fully committed. With the passage of time there’s growing awareness within the public that the Montessori early childhood model which allows children to learn through play and exploration is the best. However we have also upgraded our infrastructure by adding sports, music and special needs education facilities to enhance the joyful learning experience of our children. With the addition of our new facilities, I can confidently state that TMY is on a par with the best Montessori schools worldwide,” says Shirley Madhavan Kutty, an English literature alumna of Cambridge University, UK, who after her marriage to the well-known journalist the late Madhavan Kutty, promoted TMY in Delhi 36 years ago. Currently this celebrated pre-primary in tony Vasant Vihar with a long waiting list hosts 220 infants from some of Delhi’s most prominent families mentored by 30 teachers, on its muster roll. TMY is followed by the almost equally well-reputed Step by Step, Panchsheel, for the fourth time consecutively, Little Pearls Play School, Vasant Vihar, Kangaroo Kids, GK I, and Shishuvan, Vasant Kunj who constitute the…